Kmart Number One Closing

[txlady]

I thought Kmart sold crappy goods back in the 70s, I can't believe they've held on this long. I still remember 'blue light specials', being dragged there by my parents.

[Sandhouse]

As for dating the black-and-white parking-lot picture, I may see a `62 Pontiac behind the `60 Caddy, but my eyes aren't good enough to tell. I'm going to guess early 1961. When did you last see a `61 Falcon?

It was a big event among my 7th-grade friends when the K-Mart opened at Groesbeck and Cass in Mt. Clemens around 1965. K-Mart was very close to the soul of discount-loving lower-middle class Clinton Township. I remember making regular trips there with my parents and later on my own, by bicycle. I'd pick up model car kits and slot-car parts and in the mid-1970's, tools to patch my Corvair together. I'm still using a few tools with K-Mart pricetags on them, so they weren't complete junk back then.

From reading retailing news in the 1990's, it sounded like K-Mart was torpedoed by its failure to build an information system that let it control its costs and inventories. That is what distinguishes Walmart and Target from failing retailers. I'm afraid the jury is still out on Meijer. Every time I wait in their slow-moving checkout line, or can't find something I know is on the shelf at Walmart or Kroger, I get a faint premonition of discount-store doom.